She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 133

(Natasha)

The flowers arrive at three-eighteen.

I know the exact time because I'm watching the clock count down to a four o'clock call I'm dreading.

Mason's response to the filing against me went out on the wire at noon.

Stein M&A has been trending alongside Warren Global on three different financial channels since the news went public, and the press team has been fielding calls in the war room since the ink dried.

Priya knocks before she comes in, which is unusual. She usually just appears.

Like a young, very well put together fairy godmother, bearing coffee and neatly typed reports, offering to make my life easier.

There’s a young man next to her, staggering under the weight of the arrangement he’s carrying.

It’s not a bouquet. It’s large enough to deserve sentience.

An artfully arranged riot of color.

Beautiful and wholly impractical.

Julian has to be behind it.

"This has arrived for you," she says, “I don’t really know where to tell him to put it.”

I can see why. It would need its own boardroom table.

“Uhm. Just there on the floor is fine I guess.”

She looks at me, and her expression is carefully blank. Which is very out of character for Priya.

I tip the delivery guy and wait until he and Priya are both gone before I allow myself to really look at the ode to excess taking up half the floor space in my office.

That’s when I notice the card.

Priya’s face suddenly makes a whole lot of sense.

The lawsuit didn't manage what this manages in two short sentences.

I lose any semblance of cool professionalism I’ve been managing to fake.

I’m going to kill him.

Slowly and with great relish.

I tear the card into the smallest pieces I can manage, glaring at the flowers like they’re radio active.

My desk phone rings before I can decide what to do with the flowers.

“Natasha, your mother is on line one.”

"Mom."

"Natasha." Her voice is the wrong shape.

"A delivery just came. A rather large arrangement of flowers. Your father signed for them."

The floor of my office tilts about three degrees.

"Don't read the card."

"We already have, sweetheart. It wasn’t in an envelope or anything. Did you and Julian… I didn’t realize you were seeing him."

"I’m not! Look, I’ll be home in forty minutes and then I’ll explain."

I hang up before she can ask me anything I don't want to answer inside this building.

The drive takes longer than forty minutes.

I park badly, leave my coat on the passenger seat, and rush into the house, still not quite sure what I’m going to tell them.

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